


here we come back to life, we're still breathing

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [13]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Nobody Dies, Post-Order 66, sith!jedi order, that's how the clones view it anyway because someone has to take care of the disaster space wizards, that's why they have their clones around, the giant jedi&clone cuddlepile we deserve post order-66, the jedi are capable of taking care of the galaxy but incapable of taking care of themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23470579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: “We do this every time after a battle,” Bly murmurs into her ear. “It helps keep the nightmares away.”She thinks of the post-battle hours she spends awake and pacing, her mind too busy to let her body rest even though it desperately wants to. How alone it always is.“This is better,” she whispers back. “This is so much better.”The bedding smells like the clones, smoke and armor and the faint hint of the piny soap they all use. It’s comforting. It smells like home.She sees Sabé slowly circling the room, a blaster at her hip. The door is closed and barred.Sabé catches her eye and smiles.“There are guards,” Bly tells her. “We are safe. The barrier is up again and nothing can harm us without us knowing. Sleep, cyare.”
Relationships: Aayla Secura & Quinlan Vos, CC-1004 | Gree/Luminara Unduli, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura, Luminara Unduli & CC-1004 | Gree & Barriss Offee, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Plo Koon/Shmi Skywalker, sort of anyway - Relationship
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 27
Kudos: 946





	here we come back to life, we're still breathing

Aayla Secura waits at the door to the secure room. She can feel something cold and heavy trying to get inside the Temple. She heard the shields keeping them in go down just a few minutes before, and Shmi had gone out to see what was happening.

She’d wanted to go, but Shmi had insisted. It was bad enough that there were only two Jedi fit to fight in the entire Temple, but to possibly send both of them into a trap was worse. She had taken her blaster and her borrowed lightsaber and set off with determination to help Plo.

Aayla hadn’t known that Shmi loved Plo.

So she waits at the door, lightsaber drawn and ready. Behind her, Rabé is hiding in the shadows, her blaster ready. If someone gets past Aayla, Rabé will try to ambush them.

Anakin and Padmé lie curled together on one bed, which they’ve pushed to the back and surrounded by what cover the furniture can provide. Padmé is awake and also armed, but she knows she won’t be able to do much in a fight. She will protect Anakin with her life, though.

Aayla understands. She’d be doing the same if it was Bly.

While she stands in the doorway, straining with her hearing and with the Force to figure out what is going on, she wonders what kind of misunderstandings and mistakes led them to this. How could any sane being teach that to love was to be evil? How could anyone ever conclude that love, proper love, not obsession or all-consuming thoughtless passion, was a weakness? Without loving each other, she doesn’t doubt that Jedi and clones alike would have given up and lain down to die long before this.

Even if their attachment to each other was hidden, it had certainly been there in abundance long before they were even aware of it themselves. She’d seen enough Masters grieving lost padawans and enough padawans wandering the halls after dark, blank-eyed and restless after the deaths of their Masters, to know that everyone in the Order had at least one strong attachment, familial or romantic.

If they survive this, they will rewrite the Code. She knows that in her bones. It’s useless now, in this wartorn world. Worse than useless. If they tried to follow it to the letter, it would take them to their deaths.

A blaster shot echoes through the halls, then shortly after, another. She clutches her lightsaber in suddenly slick hands and waits.

A strange rasping scream is the next sound that filters through the walls, then another. It doesn’t sound like a noise either Shmi or Plo would make, but . . .

Then she feels a ripple of Force energy wash over her, shaking the Temple slightly in its power, stirring up dust. It bounces around inside her head for a moment with a shriek of fury and fear and pain, and then it’s gone.

She clutches at the doorframe to keep her balance. The Sith Lord is dead.

Dimly she registers that the cold presence is leaving, but she is hurrying inside to check on Anakin. He’s thrashing back and forth even under the sedation, making a strange keening sound in the back of his throat. Padmé is struggling to keep him on the bed and not get hit herself.

Aayla straddles him and forces his shoulders down, sending a strong wave of Force-suggestion through him. She needs him to relax, to let Padmé get up before he accidentally hurts her. Fortunately, Rabé is there to pull her up and Anakin succumbs to her suggestion with only a weak struggle.

Padmé sits down heavily on the next bed, Rabé’s arm around her, watching Anakin’s face. Aayla climbs off of him and tries to give her a reassuring smile. She doesn’t know if it works.

Plo comes back after twenty interminable minutes, looking haggard and tired, carrying an unconscious Shmi in his arms. He sets her down gently on a bed and carefully supports her head as Aayla cleans and bandages the bleeding cut there. Shmi will have a headache when she wakes, but she doesn’t think there will be a concussion.

There’s a nasty set of bruises blooming along Shmi’s back and legs, too; Aayla isn’t surprised after being told that the strange black-armored creature they fought had tossed her into a wall as it tried to get away.

Shmi got lucky in her first real fight with a Force user, and she’ll be just fine. Aayla and Plo sit together on a bed beside her, clutching each other tightly after she forces him to sit still and let her do a rudimentary post-battle medical exam on him too. He’s tired and a little bruised from being tossed around, but he’s fine. Across from them, Padmé and Rabé are doing the same thing, even as Padmé holds Anakin’s hand.

They are all wondering how many will come back from defeating Sidious.

If anyone will come back at all.

~

They feel them enter the Temple together, bringing with them a sense of pain and triumph and worry. Rabé looks down at Padmé, who has fallen asleep against her, and shrugs.

“Go meet them,” she says quietly. “I can watch over these three well enough for now.”

Aayla nods reluctantly, sliding off the bed. She misses the shoulder-to-hip contact with Plo almost immediately, even though she doesn’t really know him that well. It was just nice to feel someone there beside her, their warmth and life against her own.

“We will most likely be moving back to the infirmary,” Plo says just as quietly, mindful of Padmé’s fitful sleep and of Shmi. “I will come back as soon as I can.”

“Go on,” Rabé says, and smiles, though there is a hint of fear in her eyes and the corners of her mouth quiver. “Go find out who survived.”

Aayla lingers for a moment as Plo hurries out the door, and puts a gentle, awkward hand on Rabé’s shoulder. “They would have kept Sabé out of it unless there was absolutely no other choice,” she says.

Rabé nods. “I know.” She breathes in and out, controlling it with an effort. “I know.”

Aayla runs after Plo. She hasn’t run in the Temple hallways since she was a crecheling, but she doesn’t care. Maybe more of them need to run, to scream, to laugh and cry and hug. Maybe that would have kept this from happening.

She does a quick headcount as she reaches the entrance, and lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding to see them all there.

On a second glance, it looks worse.

Obi-Wan is at the front, being literally carried by Mace. He’s dead weight, and his right sleeve flutters empty below the elbow. Commander Cody is just behind him, strange burns all over his face and front, supported by Commander Ponds and Captain Rex.

Luminara is next, hands clutching Commander Gree’s elbow. He’s carrying Barriss like she is a child. The same burns that are on Cody are all up and down her arms, and they are slowly weeping blood. Her robes look like she was tossed into a fire. She’s conscious, but just barely, and clinging to Gree’s neck and to one of Luminara’s hands.

A Dathomiri Aayla doesn’t know, small and lightly armored, is holding Gree’s other elbow. Gree looks slightly confused about it, but Barriss’ eyes are focused on the Dathomiri, so he’s letting it happen.

Aayla notes with clinical detachment that the Dathomiri is shaking but seems to have no obvious injuries.

Yoda is next, riding on the shoulders of Count Dooku, of all people, with Quinlan walking beside him. They look oddly subdued. Quinlan’s hair is standing on end.

Asajj Ventress follows beside Ki-Adi and Sabé, who are supporting Saesee between them, whose head is bleeding through a quick bandage, but he is upright and walking even though he needs a lot of assistance. Asajj herself is walking with a decided limp and Aayla thinks she sees a trail of blood following behind her. Occasionally she falters and leans a hand on Sabé’s shoulder.

Darth Maul and a third Dathomiri, this one bigger and heavily armed even though his armor is scorched and broken, are floating Kit in the air right behind them. He’s also wrapped in hasty bandages that look like they’re made from someone’s cloaks, and he’s definitely unconscious.

The rest of the procession is a crowd of clone troopers. She recognizes Wolffe and Fox and – there he is, he’s safe and unharmed, Bly’s safe – and some of the men from the 212th and 501st. What were they doing there?

Then she sees that they are crowded around a stretcher, and Shaak is lying on it, deathly still and bleeding from dozens of shallow wounds all across her, and she is running forward, stretching out with the Force to see what she can do.

~

It’s a hectic few hours, taking turns literally holding Shaak’s skin and organs together while they try to cleanse the creeping darkness from her wounds and keep her heart beating and her lungs working and stop her from bleeding out. Aayla ends up wrapping the burns on Barriss’ forearms and stitching up Ventress’ mangled leg as well. It feels barbaric to resort to stitches, but keeping Shaak alive is taking all of everyone’s ability to use the Force.

Yoda and Feral, the smallest Dathomiri, are surprisingly the best at keeping Shaak alive and she is watching them work when the clone commanders and a lot of the men who had guarded the Temple crowd into the isolation room they have put Shaak in. Three of them curl right up on Shaak’s bed, nestling her between them, heedless of the blood. The rest pile together on the floor, wrapping their arms around each other and touching any part of her they can reach. The three Force-users are gently escorted out to watch from the hallway.

Bly kisses her forehead as he leads her out. They look into each other’s eyes for a moment and she can feel the relief and gratitude and love pouring off of him like a nova. Then he squeezes her shoulders gently and turns to jostle into the crowd surrounding Shaak.

The clones all close their eyes and settle into a strange kind of meditation. Aayla can feel that they are communicating somehow, but she doesn’t know how. It feels like no Force bond she has ever come across.

Feral hovers uneasily beside her, and Yoda, after giving her a swift look full of equal parts happiness and sadness when Bly had held her for a moment, is watching Shaak.

Then the Force flares around her, so bright that Aayla flinches. When she can see again, the filth is gone from around her and her wounds are healing. The clones are still sitting still, swaying slightly to some beat only they can hear.

Then she realizes that they are all repeating the same phrase, so softly that it’s only a breath.

_K’oyacyi, buir, kar’taylir darasuum, gar ade linibar gar._

~

A few hours later, when they know that Shaak will live, they’ve moved her into the same room as Kit and Obi-Wan and Saesee. None of them have woken yet, and she is glad. Anakin is still sedated, but he hasn’t shown any signs of the distress he had when Sidious died.

They have all gravitated slowly into the room. Plo and Shmi are sitting by Kit’s side, with Barriss at their feet. Feral and Savage are underneath a small table that Luminara and Dooku are sitting at. Sabé is sitting on Anakin’s bed while Rabé perches on Padmé’s. The rest of them are hovering awkwardly around the walls, too keyed up to sit down but too tired to go to bed.

There’s some weird scraping and shuffling sounds and then there is a knock at the door. Commander Ponds pokes his head inside.

“Generals?” he says quietly.

Mace lifts his head. “Yes, Ponds?”

“We’re bringing some of the mattresses and blankets in from the barracks. You all need to sleep.”

Aayla blinks heavy eyes as about twenty mattresses are carried in and pushed together in the middle of the room. Bly is beside her, tugging gently at her hand.

“Come on, cyare,” he whispers close to her skin. “Sleep. I’ll be right here with you.”

She lets him guide her to the middle of the pile and relaxes into his arms. She’s vaguely aware of someone lying back to back with her – Mace, she thinks, because Ponds had grabbed him at about the same time Bly had gotten her. Plo and Shmi are curled into each other just above her head. Luminara, Gree, and Barriss are piled together vaguely to her left and below her feet. The smallest Dathomiri – what’s his name – Feral, moves towards them and lies down with his back pressing against Barriss’; she doesn’t complain and in fact wriggles back closer to him.

Dooku hovers at the edge of the pile along with Ventress, but when Yoda waddles up to them and uses the Force to push them both down and arrange blankets over them, neither of them protest. Savage and Maul come to sit beside them, glancing over at Feral as if to make sure he’s still there.

Aayla twitches as Bly throws a blanket over both of them and tucks her more closely into him, her nose pressed against his collarbone and his leg thrown over her hip.

She twitches again as Quinlan steps over Gree and flops down between her and Mace, running a hand down her side and then collapsing on his back, his arm flung over his eyes. She’s touched that he would choose to come sleep beside her instead of Ventress, who he obviously feels comfortable around. It reminds her of when she was his padawan and he would let her sleep in his bed when she had a bad dream.

Then he tries to steal her blanket and it’s exactly like when she was a padawan.

It’s a little weird being in a giant cuddlepile with the entire Jedi Council, most of their clone commanders, some random members of all their battalions, and five former enemies, but she feels safe despite that. Anything is possible in a world where Yoda is sleeping on Dooku’s chest with nobody igniting their lightsabers.

She hears more footsteps and a scraping, dragging sound, and lifts her head slightly to see Rex and one of his troopers pushing the beds Anakin and Padmé are lying on together. Padmé shifts over and grabs Rex’s wrist, tugging him down to be a cushion for her. Aayla snorts a laugh into Bly’s neck. Rex is blushing so hard his face looks like he’s sunburned as Padmé tries to get comfortable between him and Anakin.

Cody has climbed on the bed and curled himself around Obi-Wan. Jet is lying beside Kit, careful of his bandages but keeping a hand on his arm to let him know he’s not alone. A clone she doesn’t remember is draped across the foot of Saesee’s bed. Thire and she thinks Kix, or possibly Helix, are bracketing Shaak. One of the medics, at any rate. Wolffe has squeezed himself in on Anakin’s other side.

“We do this every time after a battle,” Bly murmurs into her ear. “It helps keep the nightmares away.”

She thinks of the post-battle hours she spends awake and pacing, her mind too busy to let her body rest even though it desperately wants to. How alone it always is.

“This is better,” she whispers back. “This is so much better.”

The bedding smells like the clones, smoke and armor and the faint hint of the piny soap they all use. It’s comforting. It smells like home.

She sees Sabé slowly circling the room, a blaster at her hip. The door is closed and barred.

Sabé catches her eye and smiles.

“There are guards,” Bly tells her. “We are safe. The barrier is up again and nothing can harm us without us knowing. Sleep, cyare.”


End file.
